Cyrus Dugger

Time to Right a Wrong in Georgia

A piece from the Macon Telegraph Editorial Board:

Time to Right a Wrong
In 2005, the General Assembly rushed through Senate Bill 3, a badly-thought-out mishmash of illogical “tort reform” sought by the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, medical insurance companies, hospitals and the medical profession. Its supporters hoped, in seemingly almost child-like innocence, that by drastically curbing “frivolous” medical malpractice lawsuits, physicians’ and hospitals’ insurance rates would halt their skyrocketing escalation, even dropping below the levels that were current two years ago .

Senate Bill 3 approached tort reform in two basic ways: It capped the amount that could be awarded in a medical malpractice lawsuit to $350,000 while making it far more difficult - and potentially expensive - to file such a lawsuit in the first place.

It was predicated on the belief that large monetary awards, although there have been relatively few such awards in Georgia, were driving insurance rates up to the point that physicians in some of the more sensitive specialities, such as surgery or obstetrics and gynecology, couldn’t afford to stay in practice in Georgia. (keep reading)

Posted at 11:49 AM, Mar 15, 2007 in Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)